


A Brief History Of Maria Hill

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, F/M, One-Shot, Origins, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A (very) brief history of Maria Hill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief History Of Maria Hill

**Author's Note:**

> Others have done it better before me. But this was written for the Womenverse landcomm challenge #4 - Random Words, where the goal was to write a short story featuring the 10 words you were given.
> 
> My words were: compass, kiss, lollipop, crash, fish, beer, tornado, bus, vote, university.

Maria never went to university. Her dad couldn’t afford it and he wouldn’t have paid for her to go anyway. Instead, she enrolled in the marines, catching the bus out of town without ever looking back.

In the marines, they taught her how to take orders. They taught her how to deal with a crisis, and how to use a compass. They taught her how to use most weapons under the sun, and how take out a man who tried to steal a kiss from her without using a weapon at all. She already knew how to think under pressure, how to solve problems, how to work with difficult personalities. She learned to kick ass, to run with boys who thought their balls made them better than she and to show them up, and at the end of the day to sit down with a beer and a plate of fish and fries, and yarn with the best of them.

The crash changed everything. Both legs. Physical therapy. Time out for healing, with no assurance that she’d be 100% when she got out, or that there’d be a place for her if she got back to ground zero. If a tornado had deposited her in Oz, her life couldn’t have been any more turned upside down.

Four weeks into PT, with her muscles aching and her legs hurting, and a headache from gritting her jaw so hard, Maria was surprised to get back to her room and find a man in a suit sitting by her bed. He was in his mid- to late- thirties, wore dark glasses inside, and was sucking on a lollipop, which he removed from his mouth to say, “Private First Class Maria Hill, I believe?”

She stared. “Who the hell are you?”

“Born in Chicago, solid grades, no criminal record. Believes in serving her country and using her vote. Flagged by all her instructors as exceptional although most also noted personality problems in terms of authoritarian structures.”

“I dislike obeying stupid orders. And I repeat: who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

It wasn’t a smile. It was a softening of the hard line of his mouth that suggested a smile was imminent. But it wasn’t a smile. “My name is Phil Coulson, and I’m here to offer you a job.”


End file.
